Pinterest resumes -- a way to pin down jobs?

Pinterest is known as a popular online pin board for photos of fashion, food recipes, and arts and crafts projects, but it has also become a place to find creative job resumes.

Not the old-fashioned, text-only lists of job titles and experience. These are digital resumes that include eye-catching graphics, YouTube videos and PowerPoint slides.

One man's resume making the rounds on Pinterest presents previous jobs as steps along Darwin's theory of evolution, while another lists a woman's work experience as "entrees" on a restaurant menu.

And there's even a resume that is a playlist of songs on Spotify, with the titles bearing the job seeker's message:

-- "Your Company" (Marketa Irglova),

-- "Should Have" (Cloud Nothings),

-- "Someone Like Me" (Royksopp),

-- "A Real Hero" (College and Electric Youth).

So far, it's unclear whether anyone has actually landed a new job by posting their resume on Pinterest. The site -- which has captured a niche of the social-networking market -- is being used by its members to share interesting resume styles they found elsewhere.

But that viral sharing in itself can provide job seekers some much needed inspiration.

"Job searching can be energy draining and boring," said Brie Reynolds of employment-search site FlexJobs. "It gives you a little energy, a little motivation to continue. It's one more thing to add to your arsenal."

Job recruiters are already using social-networking services like Facebook and LinkedIn to find and screen potential candidates. And job seekers can use social networks to accelerate their search, said Christopher Penn, who teaches an online advanced social media class for the University of San Francisco.

He said Pinterest has the potential to add another dimension to job searching, because it allows people who are seeking visually oriented jobs -- such as graphics or website designers or video producer -- a method to pin examples of their work.

There are other companies such as WorkSimple, and Behance and CarbonMode that offer similar ways to post a professional resume or curriculum vitae online.

While Pinterest isn't designed for professional use, "it really at the end of the day is a media network for distribution of visually oriented media," Penn said. "As long as you have stuff you can visually represent, that's the heart of it."

One Harvard University MBA student recently posted a Pinterest resume aimed solely at getting a job at Pinterest. It included a photo of herself skydiving ("risk-taker") and reasons why she was passionate about the company.

A Pinterest spokeswoman said the company wouldn't comment on if they hired her or even took notice, but said a number of current employees were active pinners before they were hired.

Jimmy Moore, of Columbia, Mo., said he landed the job he wanted with a local cable access television station because of his unusual resume, which depicted his skills evolving from a monkey walking on all fours after his college graduation to a man walking upright holding a camera when he worked for a commercial TV station.

Moore said that while he used more traditional networking methods to find his current job, interest from Pinterest in his resume caught the attention of other video industry recruiters who contacted him to find other people he might know who were also looking for jobs.

Reynolds believes Pinterest has "huge potential" as a job-searching tool. She has pinned some examples on a board on FlexJobs' site on Pinterest.

"I have seen a lot of fascinating, well-designed and interesting-looking resumes that take on an infographic look," she said. "The best ones are shared over and over."

Copyright 2012 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.